Niconail’s 15-minute budget

I could be super cheerful and persuade you that this year will be different and that you should take life by the horns, yada yada yada. But I’m not going to. Nothing will change – financially speaking – unless you start to budget.

Life is miserable, eh?

There are as many ways to budget as there are overextended consumers. I’ll share my system in a minute, but first let me warn you that it will take 15 minutes of your time. Can you spare a quarter hour for financial solvency?

Here’s the deal. Most budgets look backwards. You pull out your bills and receipts from the past month and add up what you spent. That number is supposed to indicate how much you will spend next month, right? Wrong!

A better budget looks forward. And my budgeting system only takes 15 minutes to set up. Click here to get my three-page budget. Then click on “Bargain_Babes_15_minute_Budget” in small font to download the zip file.

I’m really looking forward to using this and seeing if it’ll help. That said, I found one VERY MAJOR missing expense on this: GROCERIES! I spend almost 1/4 of my income each month for food. That results in a big chunk of my monthly budget at missing from this then!

Vicky, I don’t earmark a specific amount for groceries because I am a better food shopper if I leave groceries to come out of my discretionary income, the dollars left over after all my regular and irregular expenses are taken care of.

Since I’m retired, and don’t have mortgage or car loan payments any more, it’s rather easy for me to budget from my limited pension funds. However, I can see the value in your system for those with income that fluctuates or is reduced, as well as for those with dependent family members. That’s one part of my younger years that I don’t miss. Now I enjoy being Gran!!!